Kid vs. Squid (5 page)

I spoke in a big rush, not giving her a chance to interrupt.

“Shoal told us everything. She told us that you weren't always just a volleyball with eyes and a mouth. You used to have a body with legs and arms and knees and that little dangly thing that hangs at the back of your throat, what's it called, oh, yeah, a uvula, and maybe you don't have one now and that's why your voice screeches like an old chicken.”

“Thatcher, don't—,” Shoal said.

But I was on a roll now. Talking felt like running downhill at full speed. I couldn't stop. I didn't want to. I was talking. It was the thing I was best at.

“It must be really weird, just being a head in a box, everyone looking down on you, leaving their cola cans on your face, not even bothering to use a coaster. It's too bad you're just a witch, because I bet there're a lot of other things you could do for a living. I'm thinking head of cabbage, or soccer ball, or we could drill three holes in your skull and bowl strikes with your head.”

“Thatcher!”

This time I caught the alarm in Shoal's voice. It was too late. My motor was running, and I didn't even know what I was saying anymore. Just words, filling the air, and it didn't feel right anymore. I was just blabbing to drown everything out with verbal machine gun fire, and I couldn't stop.

Until I followed Shoal's gaze and saw how she looked down at the witch in wet-eyed terror.

Only then did I shut up.

Skalla's lips were moving, and her voice came from all around us in a storm-wind howl. Sea spray blasted us. Heart-shuddering thunder cracked over the sea. The ground shook beneath our feet, sending loose rocks and sand tumbling down the cliffs. The witch's withered lips parted to form a smile as a wave crashed, blanketing the beach in sizzling foam.

I couldn't tell what, but I knew for absolute certain something had changed.

“There now, my guppies. There now. It has been a while since I've done what I just did to you.”

“What just happened?” Trudy demanded.

The witch let out a happy sigh. “You and the boy proved yourselves to be the princess's friends. How touching. How warm. So I have rewarded your friendship. You three will share everything now. Your lives. Your fates.”

“No, you did not,” Shoal said, miserably. “You did not! I hardly know them. They are not really my friends! You
did not
!”

“Of course I did. I hope you see now that it is useless to fight me. I know too many words. Too many secrets. And I have friends here, much worse than my jellies. Yes. I will rest now. But we will talk later, my guppies. I have no doubt. Yes, we will, my three little Flotsam.”

With that, the witch closed her eyes. She sighed an exhausted sigh and fell silent.

I didn't feel cursed. More like itchy and twitchy from all the weirdness and fear and excitement. And guilty.

“Uh, hey, listen,” I said with the waves booming behind me. “I shouldn't have popped off at the witch like that. It's just, you know, I'm verbal. That's what the school counselor says: ‘Thatcher must learn to quell his overabundant verbal energy.' She means I talk too much. I do it whenever I'm angry. Or nervous. Or bored. Or sometimes it's just because my mouth is moving and it sort of takes on a life all its own and—”

“Thatcher?” Trudy said.

“I'm still talking?”

“Yes.”

“I'm sorry. And not just for talking right now.”

“I'm beyond furious,” she said, each syllable like the sharp blow of a hammer. Then she took a breath, and the taut lines of her face softened a little. “Being sorry doesn't get us anywhere. But I know you were trying to help. What we need to do now is head back to the boardwalk and sell cotton candy.”

“Cotton candy?”

“It doesn't have to be cotton candy. It could be taffy. People want taffy, and I will provide it. I will be Trudy the taffy girl.”

Shoal, who'd been busy affixing tape over the sleeping witch's mouth, sealed the box and latched it. “It's the curse. It's taking hold of her. It will take you too. You will be a slave to worthless souvenirs and non-nourishing foods and carnival games. At the end of summer, when my family drags themselves across the cold sand and walks into the waves to sink, to drown, to drift, you will be with us. You are like us now. You are Flotsam.”

“What? Don't be ridiculous,” Trudy said with a laugh. “I'm fine. Maybe a little stretchy. Stretchy and pully. Taffy makes you happy,
get your happy taffy
!”

I grabbed her by her arms and screamed in her face. “Trudy! Get ahold of yourself! It's the curse.
You don't really want to sell taffy. Think! You're a detective! And a superhero! And … and you want to run the ring-toss game. Toss a ring, everyone's a winner, everyone gets a prize!”

Oh, no.

The curse had its hooks in me too.

I could feel myself pulled in the direction of the boardwalk, as if the midway were a giant magnet and I were made of iron filings. A tunnel was closing down over my mind, and I just wanted to stand behind the counter of the ring-toss game and take money from tourists and give them rings to toss and bark out the mindless ring-toss chant all day long.
Everyone's a winner. Everyone gets a prize.

“No!” Trudy and I both said at the same time.

“Fight it,” she said.

We locked eyes. Okay. If she could hold out, then so could I. At least for a little while.

I picked up the box and took a few marching steps toward the surf when Shoal grabbed my wrist.

“What are you doing?”

“I'm tossing this thing into the sea. Hopefully the fish will gobble it up and this will all be over and I can go back to my uncle's to pack my things and catch the next bus to Phoenix and sit outside on the front porch for a few months until my parents get home and Trudy can use her detective powers to
find stray dogs and you can … do whatever it is you do.”

“No,” Shoal said. “Give her to me. We still need her.”

“What for?” Trudy asked as I reluctantly handed the witch-box to Shoal.

Shoal gazed out over the water, her mouth drawn in a grim line. “The witch's magic is already in effect. It is like a disease. You two are infected, as am I and all my family. You may have resisted the first tugs of the curse for now, but the magic is still working its way through you. It will get worse.”

“But aren't you also cursed?” I asked. “You go back to sea and float on the waves at the end of summer?”

“The Drowning Sleep, yes.”

“Then how is it you're not stuck on the boardwalk, selling T-shirts or whatever?”

“Because,” Shoal said, “I have been inoculated.”

“Great, then let's get Trudy and me inoculated too.”

“It is … not that simple.”

“Yeah. I didn't think it'd be,” I said. You don't suffer a spell cast by a witch who's capable of destroying an entire city and then go get a shot from a nurse.

“But I will try,” Shoal said. “I require a container of some kind, one that can be filled with water and then tightly sealed.”

“I have such a device. I call it my water bottle.” Trudy produced one from her backpack.

“It will suffice.”

We watched as Shoal warily crept up to the surf and filled the bottle with seawater.

“What do you think of her?” I asked, too low for Shoal to hear.

“I'm not sure. I still have a lot of questions. All we know for certain is that she's a thief.”

“Maybe. But we don't know what Griswald was doing with Skalla's head in the first place. Lots of questions, not enough answers. If there's a chance she can remove the curse from us, I think we have to trust her.”

“Okay. For now.”

Shoal returned with the filled bottle. “We shall do this away from the beach. Once they've licked their wounds, the jellies will return. And they are not the worst of Skalla's minions. We must find temporary refuge. Somewhere with privacy. A place where they will be reluctant to show their faces.”

“How about the taffy shop?” Trudy said. And then, realizing what she'd said, “Oh, crud.”

Shoal wanted a place off the boardwalk and beach, and Trudy reasoned we needed food—rock fights burn a lot of calories, and Shoal in particular
looked pale and shaky—so we trooped over to a mostly empty pancake house called Pantastic's. We settled into a corner booth and ordered breakfast. Trudy asked for protein cakes, I got a mountainous construction of pancakes and whipped cream and strawberries, and Shoal ordered smoked salmon and clam juice. It was an odd breakfast. For one thing, we were eating with a head at our feet, the
What-Is-It??
crammed into Trudy's backpack along with her crime-fighting gear. But the pancake house was a good place for this kind of meeting. The piped-in music covered our voices, and once the surly waitress delivered our food, she hid on the other side of the restaurant so she wouldn't have to get us anything else.

I glopped syrup and butter around on my plate. “What's the deal with the witch now? Is she napping?”

“Casting the Flotsam spell over you and Trudy cost her, so she must rest,” Shoal said. “She wouldn't have expended so much of herself if she didn't see you as a threat. She thinks you are my friends.”

“We're not,” I snapped, and instantly felt sorry. I knew I should apologize, but before I could, Shoal continued.

“It does not matter if we are friends or not. Skalla
thinks
we're friends. And that makes you her enemies, which is why she was willing to spend power to keep you from thwarting her plans. She must sleep awhile to regain her magical strength, but I do not know how long.”

“But with her mouth taped up, what more can she do?” Trudy asked.

“Some of her spells are already in place, brewing in the sea and gaining potency. I do not know what their purpose is, but it is very bad. And do not presume a strip of sticky fabric can stop her for long. She lost her body and still managed to sink our city. She may just be a severed head, but she is the most powerful severed head my people have ever faced.”

Trudy carved her pancakes into geometrically perfect squares. “It looks like we've got our work cut out for us. First we'll have to stretch the taffy until it achieves optimum pliability and—”

Oh, no, not again. “Trudy, you're losing it,” I said. “Try to stay on topic. The key is placing the bottles so close together that the ring bounces off, which makes it hard for the mark ever to win the big teddy bear and I'm talking about ring toss again, aren't I?”

Trudy confirmed it with a grim nod.

“I am sufficiently refreshed,” Shoal said, putting down her fork. “It is time to perform some magic of my own. Come with me.”

We found privacy behind a closed-down seafood restaurant that still smelled like fish.

“This is good,” Shoal declared. “Skalla's creatures do not like places where fish is eaten.”

That made sense to me. If there was a place called Suburban Boy Burgers, I don't think I'd choose to hang out there much.

Shoal asked Trudy if she had something sharp, like a pin. Trudy had sewing needles, thumbtacks, safety pins, a hat pin, an “I
Los Huesos” pin, and those pins with the little plastic colored balls on the end that you stick in a map.

“Yes,” Trudy said. “I have a pin.”

Shoal took a few of the map pins.

“Are we going to be sticking ourselves with those?” Trudy asked.

Shoal told her we were, so Trudy dug in her backpack again and produced some alcohol swabs and Band-Aids. “Infection is a dangerous foe, as surely as any jelly creature.”

Shoal swirled the bottle of seawater. Little plankton particles danced like glitter in a snow globe.

“We are all made of the ocean,” she said. “We began as fish who learned to crawl onto land, who learned to breathe air and eventually became us. And the ocean remains inside us still. Our blood is seawater. Our hearts govern the currents within. We are all
part of the Great Soup, and the sea is the broth. After many years of trial and investigation, my father's sorcerer recovered oil from an extinct fish that contained the ingredients to combat Skalla's magic. But all we had were a few precious drops. Not enough to rid us of the curse, just enough to help one of us resist the pull of the boardwalk, for a little while. My father gave it to me and charged me with the task of locating Skalla and bringing her to our summer palace. There, perhaps she could be… persuaded… to undo her evil magic.”

Summer palace? Magic fish oil? Soup? The more Shoal talked, the less I understood.

“The fish oil magic is in my blood. Now I will share it with you. I only hope it is enough to help all three of us resist the call of the boardwalk until we find a more permanent solution.”

Using Trudy's pin, she pricked her finger and let three drops of blood fall into the water. Spidery threads dissolved and turned the water pink.